Review: Turok

Players:1-16

Price:$59.99

Platform(s):Xbox 360

Developer:Propaganda Games

Publisher:Touchstone Studios

ESRB:Mature

Website:Turok

Rating:

Turok, the story of a brave soldier who improbably finds himself stranded on a hostile, alien world surrounded by hostile cohorts, hostile dinosaurs and hostile game play. The Turok franchise has a history of less than positive reviews, deservedly so. Propaganda and Touchstone are attempting to pick Turok up and out of the mud by his bootstraps. In a way they were successful. Not as successful as we’d like, but it seems they’re on the right track.

This time around the story is going in a different direction. Abandoning the mystical nature of previous Turok stories you now play as stereotypical and curiously named Native American, Joseph Turok. Joe is a soldier new to Whiskey Company who trained and fought as a member of the troop that they are off to hunt down, quite originally named the “Wolf Pack”. So he gets a lot of resistance from his fellow WC soldiers. This is okay because they only matter as far as story and witty banter go because in a firefight they’re about as useful as a rectal thermometer.

The troop crash-lands on the planet where “Wolf Pack” is having a barbeque and before you can cue “Yakety Sax” they’re being chased by mutant dinosaurs. Minus a few character twists and useless plot devices, that’s the story. You don’t really need much more than that because there are dinosaurs. Everyone knows that when there are dinosaurs involved, the only way to make it better is to have Samuel L. Jackson riding one alongside his talking monkey sidekick who is possessed with the ghost of Elvis Presley.

While this is definitely the best of the Turok games – which is kind of like saying it’s the cutest herpes sore you’ve ever seen - it certainly isn’t a game to get terribly excited about. Even the Turok hallmark of great weapons isn’t that impressive this time around. The lack of variety is made up for with alternate firing options though. There is a stealth style of play that is optional because of the virtual impossibility of it due to the hive mind AI in everyone and everything in the game. The stealth element of the game would have been greatly aided by a Metal Gear Solid technique of hiding or stopping enemy communications. Instead, as soon as one enemy spots you, every soldier within a ten-mile radius surrounds you before he can even call it in. It’s kind of like that dog in the commercials that always smells bacon.

The technique to counteract this is, like the rest of the single player game, disappointing. The game boasts a neutral AI from the dinosaurs, who also lack variety. What that meant in advertising was that you can turn dinosaurs on your enemies. This only works to a point. Occasionally the game gives players the option to wait and watch as enemy soldiers are already fighting dinosaurs, then you get to go in and mop up the fatigued winner. Otherwise the curious creatures are interested in flares shot from a shotgun or firefights. The theory behind this is that you can turn them on the soldiers. This works counter intuitively. Once a pack of dinos is turned on your enemies, one of two things is going to happen. The dinosaurs will win and then come back and attack you no matter where you are, or you’ll give away your position and the soldiers who aren’t being eaten will attack you instead of helping their comrades. A for effort, but C for execution.

All in all, the main portion of the game is the first-person shooter aspect. As far as that goes, it’s fair to middling. The actual difficulty level has a very inconsistent curve. Playing through is like a Japanese game show where you run into a door and there could be just a piece of paper, a person hiding or a brick wall behind it. The decision to exclude any sort of aim assist makes it nigh impossible to take on anything fast with anything less than a rocket launcher or more than the knife. The knife itself is said to be the most important weapon of your arsenal. Unfortunately the developers didn’t feel the same way as the writers.

The knife’s FPS animation moves so slowly that you have a hard time believing Joe was trained at all. If you miss it takes an eternity to try again thanks to the fact that Joe moves about as fast as the winner in an insomniac foot race. When you get the timing right on it, it means a cut scene instant kill. In a realistic twist, these knife kills leave you disoriented and looking in a different direction than when you started. This is novel and would continue to be novel if they had more than one or two animations for each thing you can kill.

Finally, in a shining moment, the multiplayer mode of Turok is decent. That’s really about all that can be said for it. An online match is as good as the people you play with, and I did have a great time in the Turok LIVE games. They push strategic battle and intelligent game play as most of the options that are supposed to work in single player against enemy AI work on real people because your fellow gamers don’t have omniscience and hive mind. However, in the case of using the knife in an online match, make sure there are no other enemies around and don’t miss.

From a general stand point, the best that can be said for this game is that it is a mediocre FPS at best, and at its core, that’s exactly what it is. Good online play redeems the tepid single-player and to sum it up in a quote from a friend, ”Dinosaurs make everything that much cooler.”